


So Far From Where I Want to Be

by HighKingMargo



Series: The Magicians Daemon AU [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Daemon Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Explicit Sex, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 18:16:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16124054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighKingMargo/pseuds/HighKingMargo
Summary: When Margo Hanson was a child, she’d thought her daemon had been quite ugly. He could change form, of course—she wasn’t so unfortunate that she’d somehow managed to procure the only soul who couldn’t change shape—but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about him, no matter what he looked like, that marred his appearance.AKA Margo gives Eliot her utmost truth during their secrets trial (Daemon AU).





	So Far From Where I Want to Be

When Margo Hanson was a child, she’d thought her daemon had been quite ugly. He could change form, of course—she wasn’t so unfortunate that she’d somehow managed to procure the only soul who couldn’t change shape—but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about him, no matter what he looked like, that marred his appearance. She would hold him close, her mother’s makeup brush in hand, and cover him in bright, shimmering powders that she hoped would make him look like something more. Like something magical.

“Oh, sweetie,” Margo’s mother had said when she’d caught her smearing golden streaks down a dove-shaped Alistair’s wings, “that isn’t going to help. You need it here—” she brushed the highlighter across Margo’s cheekbones— “and here,” she finished, sweeping a bit of it under the arches of her eyebrows. “Now, go wash off your daemon. He looks like a circus animal.”

Margo sighed and took Alistair to the bathroom sink to rinse the makeup off of his feathers. “I just don’t understand,” she said as she watched the glitter swirl down the drain. “Even looking like this, even with the thing she uses to make herself look beautiful, you’re still nothing compared to her daemon. _He_ should be ugly, but he’s beautiful. What kind of turkey is prettier than a dove?”

Alistair tilted his head and became a turkey. Not just any turkey, but a perfect replica of her mother’s daemon. Margo studied him through the mirror. “No,” she said. “It’s just not good enough.” Then, she looked up and met her own eyes in the mirror, framed by the golden highlighter expertly applied by her mother.

“You look like a princess,” Alistair said.

He was right. Somehow, with just the slightest bit of her mother’s handiwork, she’d transformed from a miserable-looking little girl into something out of a fairy tale. Maybe, she thought, I was the ugly one all along. Maybe all I need to do to fix it is make myself beautiful.

When Margo showed up at school the next week under a thick layer of obsessively-refined makeup and the shortest, tightest dress she could get away with, nobody recognized her except by the mannerisms of her daemon who, despite taking the form of a regal tiger, cowered behind her legs as she strode along on the new high heels her mother had bought her over the summer.

It felt good. The head turning, the staring, the wolf-whistling. It meant she was doing something right. (She tried to ignore Alistair whispering to her that it wasn’t what they needed.)

Chris Gabriel, senior class homecoming king and every girl’s dream, took her in the stairwell between classes, saying “I’ve never seen a freshman look so good” and “let me see what you can do with that pretty mouth of yours” and “I won’t even deny it if you wanna tell everyone you got to ride on me.”

 _No thank you_ was what Margo wanted to say, but she caught herself. This was an opportunity almost no one else in the school would be given, and if anyone found out she refused, she’d never hear the end of it. And anyway, wasn’t this what girls were supposed to want? (She tried to ignore Alistair’s quiet pleas to leave as Chris’ daemon nipped at him and backed him into a corner, just out of Margo’s reach.)

Half an hour later, Margo found herself crying in the nurse’s office, clutching a rabbit-shaped Alistair and saying she needed to go home, that she’d gotten her period, that she felt like she was going to throw up. Her mother showed up with a scowl and signed her out of school without a word until they climbed into the car.

“I know you have pads and painkillers with you,” her mother said. “You’d better have a good reason for having me pick you up. I was in the middle of an important meeting.”

Margo shook her head and hugged Alistair tighter.

“Now, Margaret.”

When Margo still stayed silent, her mother looked her up and down, studying her as if she were on display in a museum.

“Your lipstick is smudged away on the inside,” she said, “and your slip is showing. If you wanted to hide that you were having sex, you should have been more careful.”

“Mom—”

“What are you crying for?” she said. “I’m not upset. I just don’t want you to turn into one of those teenage sluts who forget how to present themselves. Next time, be confident about it, and don’t let anyone know it happened. I can’t take you out of school every time you get laid, and if anyone finds out, it’ll be murder on my reputation.”

And, next time, she was more confident about it. When Chris showed up looking for more, she swallowed her discomfort, backed him into the wall, and clutched him through his pants before he could get a word out. She kissed down his neck and gave him what he wanted, and all the while, Alistair let his daemon hold him under her claws as she bit him until he bled.

And, when Chris sent one of his friends to have a go, she did the same.

And she did it to the eleventh-grader who sold weed in the bathroom, and the girl who always skipped out in their second-period class, and the good-looking TA from the community college, and anyone else who showed any interest. She got good at it, and she got relentless, and not only did she become known as the hottest girl and best lay in the school, but she became the biggest bitch as well.

As much as Margo prodded him to accept that this was how they had to be, Alistair never took to it. With every degrading remark, he gave a silent apology behind her back. With every offer for sex, he begged her to stop. With every step she took to become someone entirely different, he held back. He held on to who they were while she let it seep away through her fingers.

 

*

 

“Jesus,” Eliot said, his wrists still bound around his lemur daemon so that neither of them could get free. “Bambi, I had no idea.”

“No one does,” Margo snapped as her ropes fell away, “and if you tell anyone, you won’t live to see the sun rise.” She quickly wiped her tears away before wrapping her arms around Alistair.

“You know,” Eliot said, “he really is beautiful. Alistair, I mean.”

Margo scoffed and stroked the brilliant blue feathers of her peacock daemon’s head. “I know he is,” she said. “You obviously missed the moral of the story.”

Eliot shook his head. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “He’s not beautiful because of his form; he’s beautiful because he’s who you really are.”

Margo nodded and looked down into her daemon’s eyes. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe someday I’ll be as beautiful as he is again.” She gripped his knee and pressed a kiss to his cheek, the first genuine kiss she’d given in years. “Thank you, El.”


End file.
